


Nothing Will Come Of Nothing, Speak Again

by creatureofhobbit



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Tony listened to the tapes expecting to hear his name.





	Nothing Will Come Of Nothing, Speak Again

As Tony had listened to the tapes, he’d kept expecting to hear his name.

“But you did nothing to her,” Clay had said the day when Tony admitted this to him.

“I did nothing. That’s the point.” Tony had replied. “I did nothing to help her.”

He hadn’t even known that some of that had gone on. When Alex’s list had first done the rounds, Tony had barely even glanced at it before passing it on to whoever he’d been sat next to at the time. It was just some stupid list rating girls, what did Tony care about that? And he didn’t even know about the whole Hannah/Jessica/Alex drama until ages afterwards. He’d never questioned the official version of Jeff Atkins’s accident either; he knew the stop sign had had to be replaced afterwards, but if he’d thought about it at all he’d just assumed that Jeff or the other guy had hit it. He’d had no way of knowing about Sheri.

But Tony thought that he should have known. If he’d been a better friend to Hannah, maybe Hannah would have felt able to confide in him more. Yes, he’d heard her venting about Alex’s list, and Marcus thinking the list gave him carte blanche to hit on her. And he remembered something about Zach and the compliments letters, but he’d just thought it reminded him of some argument he’d had with his brother when he was six. As for Ryan…well, he hadn’t specifically mentioned the poem, but Tony had argued with him, not long before they broke up, about some of the things he put in his magazine and whether it was really appropriate for him to do that, and Ryan hadn’t liked it. But he’d already shared Hannah’s poem by that time; there was nothing Tony could have done to stop him. 

That last day, when Hannah had left the duplicate set of tapes for him…he’d asked himself every day, if he’d just gone down then and spoken to her, asked her what they were, maybe he’d have been able to argue with her, to talk her out of it. Or at least keep her talking for a while, long enough to stop her going home until her parents could be there…Anything. But what was that stupid thing he’d said to Clay? That he hadn’t wanted to be bothered with it in that moment. How was he to know that he wasn’t going to get another one?

He’d barely slept that night after listening to them all, and when he eventually dropped off to sleep, he’d heard Hannah’s voice in his head. “This is your tape, Tony, because you didn’t come down that day. Because you didn’t stop Ryan, or any of them. Because you did nothing.” And when Tony looked at Clay, he could see those same emotions in Clay’s face that mirrored his own, in a way he didn’t think they had with any of the others, except perhaps Alex or Zach. Clay understood him; he shared Tony’s regrets about Hannah. Clay had looked to him for guidance after he received the tapes; it was only now, now they were together, that Tony could admit to the times when he had felt equally lost.

The nights when Clay wasn’t with him, Tony still had trouble sleeping, still found himself haunted by visions of Hannah. But it was getting better, and he knew it would continue to do so.


End file.
